Why should Delaware care?
Leadership in the Delaware House of Representatives handed down a rare sanction against a lawmaker within their own Democratic Party on Tuesday, heightening tensions just as lawmakers enter what will be a busy six-week spring to the end of the Legislative Session.
Delaware House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown stripped Rep. Sherae’a Moore (D-Middletown) of her position on the House Education Committee on Tuesday — a rare sanction in Dover that has heightened tensions among factions of Democratic Party lawmakers.
Moore, who works as a special education teacher, had also served as the committee’s vice chair.
She was the only member of the education committee who works at a public school, and has recently championed a bill to require Delaware schools to provide free breakfasts and lunches to all students.
In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, Minor-Brown said her decision came in response to questions surrounding Moore’s teaching credentials, pointing to a News Journal report published last month that said she was among 450 public school teachers working in Delaware with expired or missing licenses.
Minor-Brown also asserted that Moore had inappropriately proposed an amendment to a bill during an education committee meeting last month that she said would have benefitted Moore personally.
The bill, at issue, would mandate that all public school teachers have a valid permit or license to work directly with students in an unsupervised setting. During the committee hearing, Moore asked the committee chair, Rep. Kim Williams (D-Stanton), whether she would consider an amendment that would add leniency provisions for teachers who are working through a certification process.
Williams, in response, said she was uncomfortable with the suggestion because she believed Moore was talking about her own situation. Moore said she wasn’t.
A week after the committee hearing, Moore submitted a formal grievance letter to members of the House leadership that highlighted what she said was a series of events involving Williams that came to a head during the Education Committee hearing last month. Among her charges, she claimed Williams’ comments at the hearing made her private information public.
In the wake of the April meeting, Minor-Brown said she began receiving emails and hearing comments from people in Legislative Hall about Moore. She called that a problem, and one that “you cannot turn a blind eye to.”
On Tuesday, Minor-Brown sent Moore an official legislative memo stating that she no longer is a member of the House Education Committee.
The memo did not explain the reasoning behind the removal but, on Wednesday, the Democrats’ House communications team sent out a press statement publicly announcing Moore’s removal from the committee.
In the statement, Minor-Brown said Moore’s proposal to amend the teacher certification bill “undermined the integrity of our committee process.”
But Moore said that Minor-Brown’s decision to remove is a political one. In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, she called any claim that she isn’t legally allowed to teach “a lie,” pointing out that she recently received an emergency certification to teach special education.
She blamed administrative delays as the reason that she was on the list of teachers without a certification after a previous temporary certification had lapsed. She said she began teaching in 2018 through a program that allows second-career teachers to gain a certification without needing to obtain a new degree.
Moore further said she believes her removal from the Education Committee is rooted in what she described as a growing animus between her and Williams. In her grievance letter, Moore highlighted a bill that Williams filed in March to expand school lunches.
She said Williams had filed the bill in competition with her own, and had done so without discussing the issue or considering potential ways to align their two pieces of legislation.
“It is 1,000% about the school lunch bills,” Moore said of her removal from the education committee.
Asked on Wednesday about the removal, Williams said she didn’t have details about the decision and was not a part of it. Still, she didn’t believe it was about competing school lunch bills.
She said there are “people who have had issues with the behavior of Representative Moore during the committee hearing” – an apparent reference to Moore’s discussion of amending the school certification bill.
Williams further said that the News Journal’s April story proved that Moore’s proposed amendment would have personally benefited her.
“She went on record saying it had nothing to do with her, when, in fact, it did,” Williams said.
Williams said she doesn’t believe that Moore’s removal from the committee was a result of any larger political dynamics. Still, she did note her own displeasure with what she called “revenge voting” carried out by a progressive wing of lawmakers of which Moore is a part. Williams said those members have opted to not vote on several bills widely supported by the party as a way to protest other issues.
Among the House progressives is Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton (D-Bear), who told Spotlight Delaware that she believes Moore’s removal from the committee was a political move to buttress Williams “as the champion for our public schools.”
“I think she finds Rae’s passion inconvenient to her political goals,” Wilson-Anton said, referring to Moore by her nickname, Rae.
When asked whether her decision to remove Moore was politically motivated, Minor-Brown said “whatever else is being brought into this is really unfortunate, and we need to stick to the facts.”
Asked whether she might impose further legislative sanctions, Minor-Brown said, “I made a decision and I’m moving on.”
For her part, Moore said she will continue to attend the House Education Committee meetings, just not as a voting member.
